Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration
Linda A. Hill, Ph.D.
Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration Faculty Chair, Leadership Initiative
Linda A. Hill is the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and chair of the Leadership Initiative. Hill is regarded as one of the top experts on leadership and innovation. Hill is the co-author of Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation (Harvard Business Review Press 2014), co-founder of Paradox Strategies, and co-creator of the Innovation Quotient and re:Route. She was named by Thinkers50 as one of the top ten management thinkers in the world in 2013 and received the Thinkers50 Innovation Award in 2015.
Hill’s research focuses on leadership development, building agile, innovative organizations, and implementing global strategies. She is the author of highly regarded books and articles on leadership. Collective Genius was named by Business Insider as one of “The 20 Best Business Books” and received the Gold Medal for Leadership, Axiom Business Book Award. Hill’s TED talk on how to manage for collective creativity has over 2 million views. In 2015, Hill, along with her co-authors, received the first Warren Bennis Prize for the Harvard Business Review article “Collective Genius,” based on the book. Hill is also the co-author of Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives of Becoming a Great Leader and author of Becoming a Manager: How New Managers Master the Challenges of Leadership. Her books have been translated in multiple languages. Hill has authored or co-authored numerous Harvard Business Review articles, including “Where Will We Find Tomorrow’s Leaders,” “Winning the Race for Talent in Emerging Markets,” and “Are You a High Potential?”
Hill has chaired numerous HBS Executive Education programs, including the Young Presidents' Organization Presidents' Seminar, the High Potentials Leadership Program, and Leading and Building a Culture of Innovation. She was course-head during the development of the new Leadership and Organizational Behavior MBA required course.
Hill has been at the forefront of developing various innovative learning programs for managers, including Breakthrough Leadership, the winner of a Brandon Hall Group Award for Best Advance in Unique Learning Technology, and the award-winning multimedia management development program, High Performance Management.
Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration Faculty Chair, Leadership Initiative
Linda A. Hill is the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and chair of the Leadership Initiative. Hill is regarded as one of the top experts on leadership and innovation. Hill is the co-author of Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation (Harvard Business Review Press 2014), co-founder of Paradox Strategies, and co-creator of the Innovation Quotient and re:Route. She was named by Thinkers50 as one of the top ten management thinkers in the world in 2013 and received the Thinkers50 Innovation Award in 2015.
Hill’s research focuses on leadership development, building agile, innovative organizations, and implementing global strategies. She is the author of highly regarded books and articles on leadership. Collective Genius was named by Business Insider as one of “The 20 Best Business Books” and received the Gold Medal for Leadership, Axiom Business Book Award. Hill’s TED talk on how to manage for collective creativity has over 2 million views. In 2015, Hill, along with her co-authors, received the first Warren Bennis Prize for the Harvard Business Review article “Collective Genius,” based on the book. Hill is also the co-author of Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives of Becoming a Great Leader and author of Becoming a Manager: How New Managers Master the Challenges of Leadership. Her books have been translated in multiple languages. Hill has authored or co-authored numerous Harvard Business Review articles, including “Where Will We Find Tomorrow’s Leaders,” “Winning the Race for Talent in Emerging Markets,” and “Are You a High Potential?”
Hill has chaired numerous HBS Executive Education programs, including the Young Presidents' Organization Presidents' Seminar, the High Potentials Leadership Program, and Leading and Building a Culture of Innovation. She was course-head during the development of the new Leadership and Organizational Behavior MBA required course.
Hill has been at the forefront of developing various innovative learning programs for managers, including Breakthrough Leadership, the winner of a Brandon Hall Group Award for Best Advance in Unique Learning Technology, and the award-winning multimedia management development program, High Performance Management.
Hill’s consulting and executive education activities have been in the areas of leadership development, talent management, leading change and innovation, implementing global strategies, managing cross-organizational relationships, and diversity and inclusion. Organizations with which Professor Hill has worked include the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Accenture, AREVA, IBM, MasterCard, Merck, Mitsubishi, Morgan Stanley, National Bank of Kuwait, The Federal Reserve Bank, NASA, RELX, UnitedHealth Group, The Economist, Salesforce.com, and The World Economic Forum.
Hill is a member of the Board of Directors of Relay Therapeutics and the Global Citizens Initiative, Inc. Hill serves on the Board of Trustees of the ArtCenter College of Design and is a Special Representative to the Board of Trustees of Bryn Mawr College. She is also on the Advisory Boards of the American Repertory Theater, the Aspen Institute Business and Society Program, the Aspen Forum for the Future of Higher Education, the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), Eight Inc., the Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing, and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research. She is a member of the HR People + Strategy Advisory Council. Hill is a former member of the Board of Directors of Harvard Business Publishing, State Street Corporation, The Bridgespan Group, and the Eaton Corporation. She is also a former member of the Board of Trustees of The Rockefeller Foundation and the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund USA.
Hill completed a post-doctoral research fellowship at the Harvard Business School and earned a Ph.D. in Behavioral Sciences at the University of Chicago. She received her M.A. in Educational Psychology from the University of Chicago. She has a B.A., summa cum laude, in psychology from Bryn Mawr College.
Why can some organizations innovate time and again, while most cannot? You might think the key to innovation is attracting exceptional creative talent. Or making the right investments. Or breaking down organizational silos. All of these things may help--but there's only one way to ensure sustained innovation: you need to lead it--and with a special kind of leadership. "Collective Genius" shows you how.
You never dreamed being the boss would be so hard. You're caught in a web of conflicting expectations from subordinates, your supervisor, peers, and customers. You're constantly fighting fires. You're mired in office politics. You end each day exhausted and discouraged, wondering what, if anything, you've accomplished. You're not alone. As Linda Hill and Kent Lineback reveal in "Being the Boss", becoming an effective manager is a painful, difficult journey.
